“They’re seldom here. Maybe the water is warmer this year, and we don’t know it.”
The ferry in, the porpoises headed back toward the mouth of the estuary. Minogue waited for three cars to disembark and then drove on. The car with the yawning, sombre family followed. The wind drove rain and sea against the boat and the sprays of rain hissed against the windscreen. The Inspector stepped out into the water-world and felt the muffled throbbing of the engine rising up through his bones. Waiting on the deck for even a minute meant a thorough drenching. He entered the small waiting-cabin under the bridge and had to pull the door hard against the wind. Despite the rain on the windows here, he’d still get a fair view of the porpoises.
Rain lashed the windows harder as the ferry moved away from the dock. Minogue scanned the waters. Five minutes passed but he couldn’t find the porpoises again. They were out there somewhere, gleeful and rapturous, he knew. Shudders of waves slapping against the hull passed up through his legs as he stared at the water. Disappointment came to him as a tired ache in his shoulders, with gravity and age winning easily at the end of the gloomy afternoon. He made one last sweep of the waters before stepping out onto the car-deck.
Hoey was smoking and listening to traffic news from Dublin. Minogue took a notepad from the glove compartment.
“They’re gone,” he said. He began writing names on the pad. Hoey watched him but said nothing. Minogue took out photocopied pages from the envelope and glanced down at his own notes in the margins.
“Tom Naughton, the Guard who worked with Doyle, was first on the scene. Maybe we’re a bit late for doing anything more today.”
Hoey glanced at the clock. Minogue’s stomach registered the ferry’s yaw.
“Where will we put up, so?” Hoey asked.
“One of the B amp; Bs out the Clarecastle Road. I thought of my brother’s place but…”
Another wave thudded against the hull and the air in the car vibrated with the relayed shock. The wind smeared raindrops across the windscreen. The ferry was eased expertly into the Killimer dock, its engine rallying and slowing to negotiate the waves. Minogue felt the faint lateral sway of the boat, drawn by the waves, before it came to rest with a bump. He waved at the man lifting the gates and called out through the slit in the window as he inched the Fiat forward onto the ramp, “Damp.”
The man was young, and his face shadowed in the hood of his rain-suit reminded Minogue of a monk. The Fiat hesitated at the bottom of the ramp before beginning the incline up to the Kilrush Road.
“Well, now,” said Hoey. “Look ahead there. We’re back to civilisation here now.”
A Garda checkpoint was in place where the short road to the dock met up with the Kilrush Road. Minogue found first gear and approached the two Guards slowly. Rain poured thinly from their hats as they leaned to look in the window.
“Hello now,” said one. “Where are ye coming from?”
Minogue had his card out. In his side vision he saw a figure stirring across the back window. He reached up with the card while Hoey tendered his own to the Guard on his side of the car. The Inspector looked back and through the streaming window he saw a hooded figure standing to the driver’s side, just out of sight of his wing mirror.
The Guard tried not to look surprised as he returned the card.
“Thanks, now,” he said.
Minogue guessed that the two Ford Granadas were Emergency Response Units.
“We didn’t see ye on the way down,” said Minogue. “Around the two o’clock mark.”
The Guard shrugged.
“Ah, we do the spot checks for a couple of hours. Move around a lot,” he murmured. “Catch them on the move is the idea.”
“‘The West’s Awake, The West’s Awake,’” Minogue half-sang, half-growled.
“You said it,” the Guard grinned. “Pass on, now.”
“By the way, is head-the-ball behind us from Dublin?” Minogue asked.
The Guard took quick control of his smile but it lived on as a wry cast to his face.
“How well you spotted him now. Was it the cars beyond?”
“As well as where he’s standing, with the hardware hanging under his coat. Never thought we’d see Clare so lively, I can tell you.”
“Ah, it might blow over…sooner or later,” said the Guard. The expression on his face reminded Minogue of a farmer guessing on the weather.
“If only they’d stick to painting slogans on the walls.”
Minogue wished the sodden Guard good luck and headed for the Ennis road. No shilly-shallying around the bog-roads by Carabane trying to save a few miles either, he determined. Cars the age of his sclerotic Fiat that had started out on such boreens had never reached their destinations.
Save for streetlights smeared on the black, shiny streets, Ennis was grey and unfamiliar. Minogue parked under Crossan’s office window.
“See the score with him,” he muttered. “It’ll only take a minute. Then we’ll go and get a bit of tea or something. Have you an appetite in that line?”
“As a matter of fact,” Hoey whispered, “I have a fierce thirst on me.”
The despondent urgency in his voice startled Minogue. He looked to Hoey’s face and remembered his own whiskeys in Tralee while Hoey had nursed 7-Up. He knocked and made room for Hoey in the meagre shelter of the doorway. Crossan flung the door open energetically.
“Yiz are back,” he announced. “Come on up.”
Minogue felt his mood flattening out with each step as they trudged up the stairs after Crossan.
“Ye’ll have a drink,” Crossan said.
Minogue struggled with his reply. “None at all thanks. A bit of tea and the prospect of a bed would do wonders to, er, build morale.”
“Had a call from Dan Howard,” Crossan called out. “Wants to help out with funeral expenses and what have you. Himself and the missus want to help in any way they can.”
“Is Howard in Ennis right now?” Minogue asked.
Crossan nodded. “I told him that I’d call by his house tonight if I could find the time,” the lawyer said. He looked toward Hoey. “That eye of yours is going green. Is that a good sign?”
“I don’t know,” said Hoey.
“I’ll go with you,” said Minogue.
Crossan hesitated. Rain blew across the window with a sigh.
“Let’s eat something for the love of God,” said Minogue. “Oh. I need to use the phone here first.”
Crossan waved his arm over the phone and Minogue sat forward to reach it. He dialled his home number and watched Crossan shrug into his coat. Why had Crossan hesitated, he wondered? The phone was picked up.
“It’s me, Kathleen,” he said. “Your present husband. I’m in Ennis. It’s raining.”
“That’s not news to me,” she declared. “Tell me what else.”
He detailed the sighting of the porpoises from earlier in the day, the trip to Tralee.
“Is Shea Hoey holding up yet?”
Minogue glanced over. Hoey was studying the ceiling, his head resting on the chair-back.
“Yes, or so it looks.”
“He’s there beside you?”
“That’s true.”
“I only hope he doesn’t do something wild, you know,” she went on in a whisper. “Because you might get caught up in it. I got to thinking that, you know, he should be staying up here in Dublin to get his, you know, treatment. I worry about him being next to you. What could happen, I mean.”
“You should have seen them. I remember wanting to ride on their backs. Off they went, happy as Larry, I don’t doubt, off out to sea. Live with them and never come back home to the farm.”
“What? What are you going on about? Those creatures? Be serious now.”
Minogue took her advice. Yes, he had enough changes of clothes and was installed in a good B amp; B. He concluded the chat with a request to his wife to check yesterday’s temperature in Athens. When he put down the phone, both Crossan and Hoey were looking at him.